Fashion Sense
by Shirekat
Summary: Albus discovers that the skeletons in his father's closet are less skeletons and more a single sparkly suit.


A/N: Written for round 1 of the finals for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I'm Chaser 2 for the Caerphilly Catapults.

The round theme was literary devices. Mine were an epigraph and personification. My extra prompts were 5. (quote) "If you done it, it ain't bragging." - Walt Whitman, 10. (object) a sparkly suit, and 12. (colour) mulberry.

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"If you done it, it ain't bragging." – Walt Whitman

The afternoon had started innocently enough. Harry and Ginny were settled on the sofa, a blanket over their legs. They may or may not have been playing footsie under said blanket. Ginny was giggling. But Albus really didn't want to think about his parents flirting so he marched straight in.

"Hey, Dad," Albus had said, "Can I borrow some dress robes? I've outgrown all mine."

Harry and Ginny both looked up. "Sure," Harry told him, "What's the occasion?"

Albus rolled his eyes. "Scorpius," he said, "He's proposing to Rose tonight, and he wants me and a bunch of our mates from Hogwarts to burst in and surprise her with her favorite Muggle song."

"Surprise her?" Ginny put in, "I wouldn't think a thing in the world could surprise Rose."

"I know," Albus said, "But I was only just informed, so Rose couldn't make me tell her what's going on. Anyway, the robes?"

Harry thought for a minute. "Um…" he said, "Try in the back of the closet. There's loads back there that you probably haven't even seen before."

Albus smiled, "Thanks, Dad!" He stomped up the stairs like a very tall, lanky elephant.

About ten minutes marched by to the muffled sound of a young man singing "All You Need is Love" coming from upstairs.

" _Dad?!_ "

Harry and Ginny looked at each other in concern, then looked at Albus coming down the staircase, trailing behind him something glittery and purple and slightly menacing.

And then, they understood.

" _What_ is _this_?" Albus waved the sparkly mulberry suit in front of his parents, who burst out laughing.

"Well, you see…" Harry started to explain, but he was overcome by laughter.

"Oh, Merlin!" cried Ginny, as she, too, lapsed into a fit of mirth.

"Your Uncle George…" Harry pushed on between bouts of giggling, "When he got married—"

For a minute the middle-aged couple sat on their sofa, clutching their sides and kicking their legs and laughing like toddlers.

Albus' eyes got wider and wider, and just when he was about to suspect that the sparkly mulberry suit had some charm on it to make people laugh uncontrollably, his parents sobered up, tears in their eyes from laughter.

"When Uncle George got married to Aunt Angie," Harry said, "Aunt Angie did all of the planning, because Uncle George owning a joke shop made her question George's taste."

"Not that she was wrong, clearly!" said Ginny.

"Yes," said Harry, chuckling again, "But she decided that George might feel left out if he didn't get to do _something_ for the wedding, so she said to him, 'It's your job to figure out who your best man is going to be, and what you and he will wear.'"

"Oh, _Merlin_ , I still remember the maniacal look on his face when he came to tell us!" Ginny said, wiping at her eyes.

"Oh, I don't think 'maniacal' nearly covers it," said Harry, "But to get back to the point, Uncle George couldn't decide who was going to be his best man, so we all were—me and your uncles Bill, Charlie, Percy, and Ron. Which, we were happy to do, of course. But then, he pulled out _that suit_ and informed each of us that we'd be wearing them to stand next to him at his wedding."

"Poor Percy!" Ginny wheezed.

"Poor Percy?!" Harry turned to her, "What about poor _me_?! Percy wasn't the only one forced to wear it all bloody night, with the sequins flashing with some bloody charm that George put on them—and I'd like to point out that I won the bet that that charm would wear off after a few years."

"Hardly!" said Ginny, "It's been quite a bit more than a few years, dear. I think the bet has been and gone. Anyway, poor Percy because he didn't have a loving, very understanding wife there to dance with him all evening, sparkly mulberry suit and all!"

"We used to joke about tricking you or your brother into it one day!" Harry admitted.

"Oh, yeah?" said Albus, getting a mischievous look in his eye that his grandfather James and the other Marauders would have been proud of, "Well, Dad, Mum, what would you say if I wore it tonight?"

"Oh, dear boy," Harry said mischievously, "If you did that, I'd say I'd wear it at their wedding."

"What?!" Ginny asked, horrified.

Albus' eyes sparkled. "Deal!"

And that, dear readers, is how a nice, respectable restaurant in Diagon Alley was taken over by several graduates of the Hogwarts Marching Band, led by Albus Severus Potter, singing an unfamiliar but catchy tune to a very surprised Rose Weasley as Scorpius proposed to her.

And that is also, my dear ones, how one Harry Potter wore that same sparkly mulberry suit to his niece's wedding, where he danced with his quite lovely, very loving and awfully understanding wife all night again.

And, as I'm sure you can imagine, somehow or other things got away from them, and father and son shared one sparkly mulberry suit between nearly every family event until Ginny swore she'd go blind if she re-sparkled it again, and George had taken to showing up in _his_ sparkly mulberry suit.

Actually, my friends, I must report to you now that things got even more out of hand than that. When Harry and Albus started trading off wearing the suit to official balls and benefits, word got 'round that the Potters enjoy ridiculous clothing, and styles of the sort that Albus' namesake would be quite proud of became very in fashion in the wizarding community, and it was a very long time before someone said enough was enough. Of course, it was too late to save wizarding fashion, but the suit was quite literally buried with Harry, at his own request. Harry Potter, you see, had learned to see death not as a sad occasion, but as an occasion to celebrate the person's life, and he succeeded in giving his family a little bit of laughter amidst their tears when Albus opened the casket at his funeral to reveal one very sparkly, very mulberry suit.


End file.
